Travellers getting warning on malaria

As more travellers prepare to flee Canada's snow and cold with a trip to the Dominican Republic, medical authorities are reminding them to take precautions against getting malaria from mosquito bites.

The warning has been reiterated after a Quebec woman returned from a two-week vacation to the increasingly popular resort destination, Punta Cana, earlier this month and was diagnosed with malaria.

"You can protect yourself 100 per cent with malaria pills," Dr. Dick MacLean, the director of the McGill University Centre for Tropical Diseases, said Saturday.

"There's no absolute way to protect yourself from mosquito bites unless you stay in an air-conditioned room and don't move. So basically, you take malaria pills . . . and you prevent yourself from getting malaria in Dominican Republic with that pill. Taking anti-mosquito stuff like Deet or like Off, that will decrease the number of bites you get but it's never 100 per cent. Malaria pills are 100 per cent."

MacLean said the Quebec woman contracted the worst species of malaria, which can cause death if diagnosis and treatment is delayed.

"You delay it for a week to 10 days and your chance of dying from it is significant. If you get it treated within a day or two or three at the maximum, your chances are excellent."

He said there was a "significant delay" in diagnosing the woman from Quebec, although MacLean said she has been treated and "she's doing fine."